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The Story of 
Gary, In dian a 










AN ILLUS- 
TRATED STORY 
OF THE 
BUILDING OF 
THE MOST 
MARVELOUS 
CITY 
ON THE 
AMERICAN 
CONTINENT 

coe'vriciiit 

By H. H. Harries 

1908 









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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies Recsived 

JAN A6 1909 , 

Oopyrlgnt Entry 

dlASS c». XXa No, 



O the man who 
works, the man 
who sweats, the 
man who pounds 
and rolls the iron, who plows 
the fields, and sows the grain 
and reaps the golden harvest, 
the clerk, the student, the 
school teacher, the mechanic, 
the laborer, in fact to the 
millions of toiling men and 
women of the earth, who 
hope to rest their weary 
bodies in the great afternoon 
of life on something better 
than blasted hopes and vain 
regrets, this book is dedicated. 




T WAS NOT many years ago 
that Judge Elbert H. Gary, as- 
sisted by J. Pierpont Morgan 
and others, displayed his won- 
derful power as an organizer, 
and his marvelous ability as a constructive 
genius, in gathering into one great corporation 
the vast interests of nearly seven-eighths of the 
great Iron and Steel Industries of America. 

From the organization of the Federal Steel 
Company, with its four hundred millions of 
capital, to the birth of the United States Steel 
Corporation, with a capitalization of one billion 
four hundred million of dollars, figures that in 
each instance fairly astounded the financial 
centers of the civilized world, was but a span 
of a few years. 

The marvelous success of this vast enterprise 
is best told by their yearly financial statement, 
showing the enormous profits of more than one 
hundred and fifty million dollars in the year 1907. 
Back of Judge Gary, who is now chairman 
of the Board of Directors, and the practical speak- 
ing head of this, the greatest Industrial Combine 
in the history of the world, stand the financial 
giants of the moneyed world. Men whose open 
word can command millions of money, and whose 



integrity is as firmly established throughout the 
civilized world as is the stability of Pikes Peak, 
that raises its lofty head in the center of the 
Rocky Mountains, and frowns or smiles at will 
on the valleys that stretch away hundreds of 
miles from its base. 

With the brains and money and integrity of 
such men as Morgan, who is said to be the 
greatest concentrator of capital and physical 
energy in the world, back of him, and after a 
period of years of marvelous prosperity. Judge 
Gary conceived the idea of a great Central City 
where the vast industries of the Iron and Steel 
interests of the entire continent could center and 
concentrate their energies. The outcome of 
this dream of the great Chairman of the Cap- 
tains of Industry and Finance is the creation 
of Gary. 

In its location at the head of Lake Michigan, 
twenty-six miles from State and Madison streets, 
Chicago, is again displayed that wisdom and 
foresight that characterizes the management of 
this great Industrial Combine, ruled by men who 
think in billions, and who are building this great 
new city of Gary. 




NEv^» CiTY HAtW GARY WO. 



The new City Hall as it will appear when completed at the corner of 
Seventh Avenue and Massachusetts Street. 




OWHERE in the United States, and probably 
nowhere in the world, can be found a duplicate 
of the town and factory site of Gary. Its size, 
its natural advantages, its nearness to the great 
ore beds of Upper Michigan, Wisconsin, and 
Minnesota, and the vast coal deposits of Illinois, 
Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia ; its wonderful transportation facili- 
ties, both by water and rail ; its opportunity for a great inland harbor, 
with room for twenty miles of splendid dockage ; the healthfulness 
of its location, and its proximity to a great central labor market and 
the greatest railroad center in the world — all these were considered 
in the selection of Gary for a great city. 



THE building of a city where forty to sixty-five thousand men 
will be employed, means a wonderful advance in values ot all 
nearby property. It means a city of at least a quarter of a million 
people ; it means business openings for all the diiferent lines of trade 
and merchandising, in order to care for the wants of such an in- 




Site of the United States Steel Company's general offices at Gary 
April i8, igo6. 



dustrial community ; it means opportunities for the man with small 
capital to acquire cheap properties, and so start in business in his 
chosen line, and grow with the community. 

YOUNG MEN looking for locations often think that the new 
towns of the western country are the only places where their 
limited capital can be successfully employed. They overlook the 
fact that such towns have little if any pay roll, or industries, to 
support them, while industries like the ones at Gary will have a 
larger disbursement of cash everv week than one thousand good 
country towns of the west combined. 



OPPORTUNITIES like these offered now in this Great New 
Industrial Center building within one hour^s ride of the 
down-town district of Chicago should not be overlooked by the man 
or woman who wishes to lay the foundation for a life competency, 
who would insure comfort and peace and restful quiet in their 
declining years. Such opportunities will never come again in the 
life-time of those now living. 









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United States Steel Company's general offices at Gary, showing also 

the beautiful and artistic cement bridge over the 

Grand Calumet River. April, 1908. 



ON the pages herein will be found an illustrated story of the build- 
ing of the most marvelous city on the American continent. 
Not in the history of the industrial development of the world can be 
found a parallel to the building of Gary. The United States is famous 
throughout the world for its vast enterprises and its wonderful achieve- 
ments ; the industry of its people, their initiative genius, their pluck 
and push and untiring energy, together with the marvelous resources 
of the country, are topics of conversation and of wonder and admira- 
tion throughout the 
whole world. But 
never before in the 
history of the material 
development of the 
American continent, 
or its people, has an 
industrial enterprise 
of such gigantic pro- 
portions been con- ^.111. entrance to the great mills 

Going to work. 





The corner of Broadway and Fifth Avunuc as it appeared 
April i8, igo6. 



ceived and put into execution, and carried out, as the marvelous 
enterprise now building at Gary, Indiana. 

THE pictures here shown represent, in a feeble way only, the 
progress and development of barely eighteen months of labor. 
The great mills now nearing completion will be the largest Iron and 
Steel Manufacturing Plant ever built by the hands of men. Nearly 
seven thousand acres will be required on which to build this monster 
industrial plant, and furnish locations for the great allied industries 
which will have their main central plants at Gary. The initial in- 
vestment in the land alone for this great enterprise is the largest in the 
history of industrial development in the world. 

THIS all new town of Gary presents the most wonderful record 
of growth and development, in the shortest period, of any 
town or city in the civilized world; it is without a parallel in any 
country on the face of the earth. Unique in itself, because of the 
fact that, destined as it is to be one of the world's greatest centers of 
industry and activity, and having already expended over fifty millions 




Broadway and Fifth Avenue, looking south, as it appeared July 24, 1908. 

of dollars in constructing the most gigantic manufacturing plant in the 
history of civilization, it is withal just beginning to build. Those who 
read this and doubt its truth should come here and verify its every word. 



THE possibilities for profitable investment in Real Estate in a city 
like Gary are so great that they cannot be described or fully 
explained in a conservative article of this kind. The reader is asked 
to bear in mind that this place, that two years ago was a wilderness 
without a habitation, is to be the Capital Center of an industry that more 
clearly and truthfully 
indicates the progress 
and development, the 
prosperity and wealth 
of every civilized 
country on the face 
of the earth, than any 
other industry known 
to man — The Iron 



and Steel Industry. 




Gary State Bank, Capital $100,000 
S. W. Corner Broadway and Fifth Avenue. 



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Fifth Avenue, looking east from Washington Street, October i, 1908. 



THE first of the series of great mills, covering close on to one 
thousand acres of ground, is now nearing completion, and is the 
crowning masterpiece of the skill, the observation, the experience and 
training, of the master minds of the Iron and Steel world for the past 
one hundred years. In addition to this great plant, which of itself 
would be sufficient to build a city of one hundred and fifty thousand 
people, there will be located here the main central plant of each of the 
great subsidiary companies controlled by the United States Steel 
Corporation, namely: 

The American Bridge Company, 

The American Tin Plate Company, 

The American Steel and Wire Company, 

Also the great Independent Plant of The American Car and 
Foundry Company, that is now building an enormous plant 
that will use eight to twelve thousand men it its operation, 

and others now negotiating for locations. Six thousand acres are re- 
served for these great plants, any one of which alone is large enough 
to build a city greater than the largest city in the State of Indiana. 




Broadway and Sixth Avenue, as it appeared two years ago in July, 1906. 



WE have given herein a brief outline of the great industries build- 
ing in Gary, that you may better understand the wonderful 
opportunities in a community where wisely selected Real Estate will 
advance by leaps and bounds in months instead of years. The value 
of Real Estate increases hand in hand with the growth of population, 
and there is no place in America today that is growing in population as 
fast as Gary, Indiana. The wise investor of today will be the rich 
man of tomorrow. We are on the ground ; we know whereof we 
speak ; we were here nine months before the great Steel Corporation 
put a single deed on 
record. We have 
seen it grow inch 
by inch and step 
by step. Two years 
ago the population 
of Gary consisted of 
barely enough people 
to organize the town 

government, a per- Security Building, April. 1908 

N. E. Corner Broadway and Sixth Avenue 





OPENING ot the great harbor at Gary, Indiana, July 23, 1908. The ; 
members of the Gary Commercial Club and Hon. John W. Kern, demo 
in the commercial, civil and political life of the state of Indiana, being warped to 
visitors. Superintendent Gleason, whose master mind is responsible for the con 
action the great unloaders and conveyors shown in the foreground on the left c 




THE AREA EMBRACED IN THIS PANORAM 




mer, Elbert H. Gary, with twelve thousand tons of iron ore, having on board the 
ic candidate for Vice President, and many other distinguished gentlemen prominent 
■ dock, amid the enthusiastic shouts and plaudits of many thousands of residents and 
ction of this, the world's greatest steel mill, was there to give the order that put in 
le picture and spanning the largest and finest ore bins of solid cement in the world. 






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/lEW IS NEARLY ONE THOUSAND ACRES 




Broadway and Sixth Avenue as it appears today, November i, 1908. 
Looking south, Gary Hotel on the right. 

feet wilderness of hills and ponds, today an active city of fifteen 
thousand people with miles of the finest streets to be found in the 
State of Indiana. Hotels costing upward of one hundred thousand 
dollars. Stores and office buildings that would do credit to a city twenty- 
five years old. Street car lines paying, it is said, fifty dollars per car a 
day profit. A water tunnel two miles under Lake Michigan, electric 
lights and gas, and a school now building at a cost of one hundred and 
ninety-four thousand dollars; the finest harbor on the Great Lakes, that 
will have more tonnage when the industries are completed than the 

harbors of Chicago 
and South Chicago 
combined multiplied 
by two, and the great- 
est Iron and Steel 
Mills in the world, 
built by the largest, 
richest and most pros- 
perous Industrial 
Gary Hotel Combination in this 

N. W. Corner Broadway and Sixth Avenue 





The down-town district of Chicago as it appeared in 1833. 

or any other country. Gary is connected with the outside world by 
thirty-two great lines of railroad and twenty-eight steamboat lines, and 
will trade with every civilized country on the globe. 

THE great city of Chicago, twenty-six miles away, with its ninety- 
six square miles of territory, its four thousand two hundred miles 
of streets, fifteen hundred miles of sewers and forty-eight miles of 
boulevards, is barely seventy-five years old. The founders of Chicago 
did not have in mind the building of a great city ; what they accom- 
plished was only incidental to the ordinary pursuit of the varied activities 
of life, but their efforts have resulted in the greatest material develop- 
ment the human race ever has witnessed, in a similar length of time. 
In the down town district, a spot a mile square, can be pointed out 
where much more business is done than in any similar space in the 
world. The early settlers of Chicago had but little encouragement to 
believe that a great city would ever grow out of the swampy morass in 
which the townsite was laid ; the country round about was a wilder- 
ness almost unknown ; their neighbors were Indians, not always 
friendly ; but the geographical location for a great distributing center 




As the corner of Broadway and Seventh Avenue appeared April i8, 15-.. 

was there, and the people came, and step by step the Indians were 
driven westward into the wilderness towards the setting sun, the song 
of the axe and the music of the saw became the accompaniment to the 
mother's song as she sang in the twilight the lullabies of childhood. 

IT required seventeen years, or from 1833 to 1850, for Chicago to 
grow into a population of twenty-nine thousand. It took Gary two 
years, or from 1906 to 1908, to grow into a population of fifteen 
thousand. The next ten years of Chicago's history, or from 1850 to 
i860, its population grew to be one hundred and nine thousand. 
What will Gary do in the next ten years, where sixty-five thousand 
men will be employed, every working day, where the fires never go 
out, and where the nights will be illuminated for miles about by the 
great furnace fires of the world's greatest industry? 



READER, do you want an interest in this great manufacturing 
center 7iozv, when you can get it at a mere fraction of what it 
will be worth in three to five vears from now? or are you willing to 




Broadway and Seventh Avenue, looking north. 
November i, 1908. 



watch this great Pitts- 
burg of the west grow 
into a population oi 
two hundred and fifty 
thousand people with- 
out profiting by the 
development and in- 
crease in values that 
always have and al- 
ways will follow the 
investment of enormous capital in industrial enterprises of this kind, 
and refer to it five years from now as the opportunity you cast aside ? 

THIS is an age of large things. Fifty years ago the combined 
manufacturing interests of this continent could not have built a 
place like Gary ; but this is a day of quick action ; it is a rapid age ; 
it is the day of the trained man whose hands are wired to his brain; 
it is the age of combination of capital and men. The great fortunes 
are made now by the men who, seeing the opportunities, know enough 
to grasp them. The opportunity oi your life is knocking at your door. 
Will you receive it or reject it? 

THE great development of the next twenty-five years will be in 
the Middle West, and west of the Missouri River and east of the 
Rocky Mountains, 
because the resources 
of that great region 
are unlimited and the 
climatic conditions are 
conducive to develop- 
ment. Study the map 
of the United States 
and the development 
taking place today. 





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First National Bank, Capital $100,000 
And First Trust and Savings Company 
Broadway, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. 




The Victoria Hotel, south east corner of Broadway and 
Seventh Avenue. 1908. 



and the great projects planned for the future, and you will find the 
reason why the Greatest Combination of Capital and Physical 
Energy in the world is coming west and building the largest Industrial 
and Manufacturing Enterprise in America at Gary. 

THE future of Gary is thus assured. Its wealth is not problem- 
atical or hidden in unknown mines of gold or silver or copper, 
but is securely stored in banks and other treasure houses of the country, 
from which to be drawn as needed. It is not a city of vague expec- 
tations, but is as solid and substantial as the names of Carnegie, Mor- 
gan, United States Steel Corporation, and hundreds of independent en- 
terprises with their thousands of millions of dollars can make it. 

FROM Minnesota and Superior ore fields this great Company will 
bring by water in its own boats the crude ore from its own great 
mines to its own docks, some of which are now completed in the very 
waters of Lake Michigan at Gary. At the great mills this ore will be 
turned into steel and reloaded again into its own boats for distribution 
down the great inland waterways, and down the Mississippi River to 




St, Louis, Memphis, 
New Orleans and all 
the Gulf ports and so 
on through the Pan- 
ama Canal to the 
great Pacific and the 
far-off ports of China 
and lapan and the Far 
East. In the other 
direction the Steel 
Company's boats will ply the Great Lakes and canals, and the Hudson 
River to New York, there to be sent in all directions by canals, rivers 
and ocean, to all points on the Atlantic coast, and there also to be re- 
loaded in ocean-going steamers to Europe and the Continent of the 
Old World. 



JefTerson Public School 
Sixth Avenue and Jefferson Street. 



IT is estimated that ten million tons of ore annually will be diverted 
from Pittsburg to Gary, at an annual saving of more than one 
mil'ion dollars in carrying charges, and the savings on the haul or 
finished steel and iron from Pittsburg back west will double, triple and 
multiply the million dollars saved in ore freights. 

THE mills at Gary will not only be the largest in the world, but 
they will be the most modern, and consequently the most 
economical to ope- 
rate. All of the im- 
proved methods and 
modern improve- 
ments that have been 
added piecemeal to 
the plants at Pittsburg 
and other American 
cities, and at the 

raniOUS ivrupp works One of the great main sewers, showing the size 

and character of the public improve- 
ments being installed. 





Broadway, looking north from Eighth Street. 

at Essen, Germany, will be built from the ground up at Gary, so in 
times of depression or panics the mills at Gary will continue in opera- 
tion when less modern plants that are expensive to operate will be 
forced to close down. 



JAMES J, HILL, the great empire builder of the Great Northern 
Railroad, in a recent letter to Governor Johnson, of Minnesota, 
declared "that the building of fifteen thousand miles of additional rail- 
road trackage every year for the next five years, at an annual cost ot 
over one thousand one hundred million of dollars, was absolutely 
necessary." At one hundred and forty tons to the mile it would re- 
quire two million tons of steel rails 
every year to furnish the fifteen 
thousand miles of track required. 
This is nearly two-thirds of the 
product of all the rolling mills in 
the United States. The task of 
supplying this immense amount of 
new steel will devolve upon the 
great Economical Plant at Gary. 

The residence section of Gary 
in April, igo6. 





The Emerson School Building now being erected at a cost of $194,000 

THE plants at Gary will consist of eighteen Blast Furnaces, 
eighty-four Open Hearth Furnaces, six Rolling Mills, besides 
many hundreds of acres of shops and departments for special work. 
The Gary Steel Mills will require ten million tons of ore annually and 
will put out from four million to five million tons of finished steel, 
more than one million tons of which will be rails. 



IN view of the foregoing facts, can you or do you doubt the future 
of Gary ? Do you think of the United States Steel Corporation 
as an ordinary Steel Company with one or two mills? If so, let me 
tell you something of its magnitude, something of its wonderful re- 
sources, and its far-reaching fields 
of activities. 



THE United States Steel Cor- 
poration owns as much land 
as is comprised in the three states 
of Massachusetts, Vermont and 
Rhode Island. It employs One 





Residence section of Gary in April, 
IQ08. Van Buren Street. 




Residence section of Gary in April, ic 
Jackson Street, looking north. 



Hundred and Eighty Thousand 
workmen. More than one million 
persons (which equals the popula- 
tion of Nebraska and Connecticut ) , 
i depend upon it for their living. It 
paid out in wages last year One 
Hundred and Twenty-eight Mil- 
lion Dollars, which is more than 
the United States Government paid for her army and navy. 

It owns railroad tracks which would extend from New York to 
Galveston, Texas. 

It owns Thirty Thousand Cars and Seven Hundred Locomotives. 
It has Ninety-three Blast Furnaces which run night and day, and 
Fifty Great Iron Mines with ore enough to last one hundred years. 
It makes more Steel than Great Britain and Germany. 
It burns Ten Million Tons of Coal a year. Eleven Million Tons 
of Coke, and Fifteen Billion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas. 
Its supply of fuel would last sixty years. 

It paid Four Hundred Million Dollars for the Great Ore Beds on 
the shores of Lake Superior. 

This is the Great Industrial Corporation that is building the 
MARVELOUS CITY OF GARY, and is responsible for its future. 



D 



O NOT FORGET that Gary will grow more in five years 
than the average good manu- 



facturing town grows in fifty years, 
and that there will be more peo- 
ple in and around Gary in ten 
years than in the largest city in 
the State of Indiana that has been 
growing and prospering for the 
past fifty years. 




The E. H. Gary, first steamer to 
enter the new harbor. 



From THE ECONOMIST Financial 
Editorial, December 5, 1908. 



' I ^HE drift and the opinion of the Captains 
■*■ ot Industry as to the future may he in- 
ferred from the developments at Gary and the 
plans that have been adopted to be worked out 
later on. Enough has been said in regard to this 
new field of the United States Steel Corporation 
to indicate in a way the magnitude of ihe under- 
taking, but Chicago does not yet appreciate what 
is happening close to its doors, and still less does 
the rest of the world grasp the magnitude of the 
project. It sounds like exaggeration to say that 
engagements already entered into contemplate the 
employment of 75,000 men, and that a popula- 
tion there of 250,000 in the near future is a con- 
servative estimate, but when such information 
comes from cautious men, familiar with what is 
going on, one must accept the statements with 
tolerance at least. 



]AN 16 1909 



A PROPHESY 



ENGINEER OFFICE, U. S. ARMY 
508 Federal Building 



Chicago, July 27, 1908. 

Mr. H. S. Norton, 

President Gary Commercial Club, Gary, Ind. 

Dear Sir: 

I desire to thank you specially for your in- 
vitation of last week to the <' Opening of Gary 
Harbor," and for the pleasure which it gave me 
to accept and be present. 

The possibilities of Gary are enormous ; it 
starts today with the advantages which Chicago 
acquired only after many years of hard struggles. 
If properly handled, Gary and its adjoining 
towns may in i 5 to 20 years rival, if not surpass, 
Chicago as a commercial and manufacturing 
community. May it successfully arrive at that 
position. y^^y ^^^ly^ 

W. H. BIXBY, 

Colonel Engineers, U. S. Army. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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014 753 378 



COMPLIMENTS OF 

^the H.II. Harries Company 

Real Estate — Investments 
Mortgage Bankers 

Security Building, Broadway and Sixth Ave. 
Telephone 236 



GARY, INDIANA 



